Time to walk away

Is there ever a time to walk away from a friend?

Emma, who came for prayer this morning, is someone who believes that being a good friend is to be the person her friends describe as 'always there for me,' especially in times of trouble.

The problem is, being a friendly kind of person, Emma has loads of friends and they all have the usual amounts of crises and she's often the first person they call. They rely on her to be 'always there' for them.

They see her as a strong, capable, positive woman, willing to help - and she does have all those qualities, so that's fine. But Emma also has a disability. When she paces herself, it doesn't bother her over-much. When she's stressed, tired and overstretched, it causes her pain.

She knows now she needs time to be quiet by herself and time to pray. Emma's favourite time to pray is while walking the dog. For Emma those two activities just naturally go together. It's the way she is and I get the impression God is happy with it.

She came round today because she's been experiencing more than usual pain and it seemed time to have some more prayer about her situation.

While she chatted about her life - I haven't seen her for quite a long time - she mentioned her friend Sue. Sue is seriously ill and doctors have told her and her family she probably doesn't have very long to live. Sue's doctor offered her a counsellor, but she says she doesn't need counselling. She doesn't do emotion. She's fine. And no one at home is allowed to mention dying.

If friends ask how she is, she says briskly, 'Fine! How are you?'

All the help she needs from them, she says, is help to 'live a normal life'. So she phones Emma when she wants to do something 'normal', like go on a clothes-shopping spree.

But taking a very sick woman round the shopping centre involves picking her up from home, helping her into and out of the car, supporting her as she walks around the shops, going with her into changing rooms, helping her dress and undress numerous times as she tries on clothes, bearing most of her weight while she does so, and keeping going for a couple of hours while she denies she is tired and says she doesn't want to go home.

Emma is finding it a strain to be with Sue on these terms. But if, when Sue phones suggesting an outing, Emma says she can only manage a short time, or admits she feels too tired, Sue forgets that she doesn't do emotion, bursts into tears and slams down the phone. Increasingly too, she is having bouts of rage, mostly taken out on her husband and children.

Emma feels very, very sorry for Sue - which is the last thing, she knows, that Sue wants. She understands why Sue is driving herself and her friends to exhaustion, and her family to tears. She accepts that Sue would rather die than share with anyone how scared she is, because then she would feel out of control, and that would scare her more.

Emma really wants to be the good friend who is 'always there' for Sue - but she can't, thank God, drive herself beyond her limits the way that Sue can. She used to. But she's learned to treat herself more gently, acknowledging her vulnerability and her need to give time to God - who is 'always there' for her - and she knows it's really harmful for human beings to ignore the very clear promptings of their God-created body when it needs to slow down or rest or take time out.

Sue doesn't have any feeling that God is 'always there' for her. She is very angry with the kind of God who would allow this illness to happen to her, and she's not going to give him the time of day, let alone let him call the shots and tell her how to live this last part of her life. She is going to handle this her way, and the role of her friends, she says, is not to tell her what to do and what not to, but to 'be there for her'.

But she isn't really letting Emma 'be there'. She isn't letting her be Emma, and be there in Sue's life, just as she is: with her loving heart, her insight into Sue's fear, her willingness to help - and with her bad leg, which causes her pain if Sue makes her walk too far or bear too much of her weight.

Emma is being a good friend to her, but she can only be Emma, not the photofit, stereotype friend Sue feels she needs and deserves - a robot-person with no opinions of her own, no feelings, no right to refuse.

And God can only be God - not a stooge who reads from a script written for him by Sue, and not someone who always shares her point of view, agrees with her own assessment of her needs, or consents to the remedies she proposes.

He has promised, 'I'll never leave you or forsake you,' and that promise is for everybody, including Sue. But if Sue doesn't want him to be God - free to think and move and judge for himself - then God can't be anyone else for her.

He won't walk away from Sue. But Sue, with her last breath, can choose to walk away from him, and from Emma, her family, and all the friends who love her and grieve for her in her anger and her grim determination to keep going at all costs. And her determination does seem grim.

Emma has said she'll be there for Sue if and when she wants to talk. And she'll be there to help with essential tasks, if she needs it.

But as for supporting her in everything she does, in the way she wants to do it - whether shopping till she drops, or forcing herself to be the last to leave parties, or calling her family useless - Emma's not going to be there for her.

She's going to walk away. Slowly and with a limp, the way she does - but confident that God isn't asking her to 'always be there' for her friend; he's asking her always to be the way he's made her and accept the ways he's given her to come through her own difficulties and achieve peace.

Walking the dog and praying.